Since 1965, the United States has spent approximately $17 trillion on anti-poverty programs – an amount almost identical to the balance on the national debt. Yet poverty rates remain essentially unchanged.

Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson gave a speech at the University of Michigan in which he first proposed what he called the “Great Society.” So what of the Great Society on its 50th birthday? Sadly, there’s little to celebrate.

The virtues of the American farmer as extolled by Paul Harvey in a commercial for Dodge trucks are the self-same virtues we look for in fathers – and for which there is no substitute when no father is around.